English 418 is an advanced course in technical writing that focuses on the development of multimodal texts. A key assignment asks students to develop two different prototypes for the very same problem-solving context.
Assignment
Design two very different versions of the same website, versions that are a substantive indicator of your ability to integrate at least text and graphics in a site that is both accessible and navigable. The nature and quality of this project should make it suitable for inclusion in a dossier that you might display at a job interview. At a minimum, each version of the website should include 12 pages/screens (we will talk about modularity and the semantic challenges of achieving that online).
You are responsible for finding a suitable project. Many different types of projects are possible, such as promotional projects that advertise a campus or community organization, instructional projects that describe how to operate or use a product or service, or educational projects that explain the origins or characteristics of a specific subject.
Your project must have the following features: (1) real project for a real client or user (no hypothetical situations); (2) access to subject specialists as sources of information; (3) access to representative site visitors for usability testing and assessment.
The parameters for this assignment are somewhat flexible and will be negotiated on an individual basis as you plan and create your website. I do have a few rules, though. (1) You should select a subject matter that interests you, and it should be professional in nature (something that would be appropriate to talk about in a job interview). (2) The website should attempt to instruct or educate or promote (other focuses are possible. (3) The website should be interactive on some level (we will talk a lot about interactivity). (4) You can generate new content and/or work with existing content, but if you work with existing content your website designs should be noticeably different.
In a commentary addressed to your me, explain and justify your design of the site. More on this commentary later, but it will be a researched-based discussion (that is, it will draw on the course textbook: Principles of Web Design by Farkas and Farkas).
Sample Student Projects
Below are links to sample student projects. Each project includes two prototypes and a design commentary. Although research based, the commentaries often include personal reflections on the task of prototyping information spaces. It is instructive to hear students talk about their design processes in their own words.
The point of asking students to develop two very different prototypes for the same problem-solving context is to stress the ill-defined nature of communication activities. There are no perfect multimodal designs for all users, only representations of literate practice that can always be multiply interpreted. This ambiguity is not a flaw per se but an inevitable aspect of human-computer interaction.
Students struggle to put aside a first design. This problem seems natural enough: it's often hard for teachers to shake-up their initial understandings of a course or academic argument. So many of the differences between the two prototypes are fairly modest. Students will redesign color choices or menus (not insignificant, actually), but leave alone, for example, their content and its organizing and navigating schemes. I continue to struggle with ways of encouraging students to be more bold in thinking through contrastive designs.
You will notice that many of the prototypes employ the familiar rectilinear grid pattern that has become so common on the Web. But I've encouraged students to also think more spatially about arranging information environments. So you'll see spatial and geometrical patterns too. Asking students to move from working with lines to working with shapes is a productive way to emphasize the ill-defined nature of communication activities. It also has the added benefit of confounding the form-content binary (the form of shape can demand other approaches to creating content).
Course Description
English 418 is an advanced course in technical writing that focuses on the development of multimodal texts. A key assignment asks students to develop two different prototypes for the very same problem-solving context.Assignment
Design two very different versions of the same website, versions that are a substantive indicator of your ability to integrate at least text and graphics in a site that is both accessible and navigable. The nature and quality of this project should make it suitable for inclusion in a dossier that you might display at a job interview. At a minimum, each version of the website should include 12 pages/screens (we will talk about modularity and the semantic challenges of achieving that online).You are responsible for finding a suitable project. Many different types of projects are possible, such as promotional projects that advertise a campus or community organization, instructional projects that describe how to operate or use a product or service, or educational projects that explain the origins or characteristics of a specific subject.
Your project must have the following features: (1) real project for a real client or user (no hypothetical situations); (2) access to subject specialists as sources of information; (3) access to representative site visitors for usability testing and assessment.
The parameters for this assignment are somewhat flexible and will be negotiated on an individual basis as you plan and create your website. I do have a few rules, though. (1) You should select a subject matter that interests you, and it should be professional in nature (something that would be appropriate to talk about in a job interview). (2) The website should attempt to instruct or educate or promote (other focuses are possible. (3) The website should be interactive on some level (we will talk a lot about interactivity). (4) You can generate new content and/or work with existing content, but if you work with existing content your website designs should be noticeably different.
In a commentary addressed to your me, explain and justify your design of the site. More on this commentary later, but it will be a researched-based discussion (that is, it will draw on the course textbook: Principles of Web Design by Farkas and Farkas).
Sample Student Projects
Below are links to sample student projects. Each project includes two prototypes and a design commentary. Although research based, the commentaries often include personal reflections on the task of prototyping information spaces. It is instructive to hear students talk about their design processes in their own words.Katya Bazilevskaya
prototype #1 | prototype #2 | reflective commentaryCourtney Fatemi-Badi
prototype #1 | prototype #2 | reflective commentarySamantha Guss
prototype #1 | prototype #2 | reflective commentaryThomas Keller
prototype #1 | prototype #2 | reflective commentaryBryon Moser
prototype #1 | prototype #2 | reflective commentaryTom Sabbatelli
prototype #1 | prototype #2 | reflective commentaryBrief Pedagogical Notes
The point of asking students to develop two very different prototypes for the same problem-solving context is to stress the ill-defined nature of communication activities. There are no perfect multimodal designs for all users, only representations of literate practice that can always be multiply interpreted. This ambiguity is not a flaw per se but an inevitable aspect of human-computer interaction.Students struggle to put aside a first design. This problem seems natural enough: it's often hard for teachers to shake-up their initial understandings of a course or academic argument. So many of the differences between the two prototypes are fairly modest. Students will redesign color choices or menus (not insignificant, actually), but leave alone, for example, their content and its organizing and navigating schemes. I continue to struggle with ways of encouraging students to be more bold in thinking through contrastive designs.
You will notice that many of the prototypes employ the familiar rectilinear grid pattern that has become so common on the Web. But I've encouraged students to also think more spatially about arranging information environments. So you'll see spatial and geometrical patterns too. Asking students to move from working with lines to working with shapes is a productive way to emphasize the ill-defined nature of communication activities. It also has the added benefit of confounding the form-content binary (the form of shape can demand other approaches to creating content).